A series of embarrassing scandals surrounded LBJ through 1961-63, and were being reported in the nation's newspapers throughout JFK's administration. Among them was the so-called "TFX" scandal involving kickbacks by favored defense contractors seeking special, highly-profitable favors from politicians willing to sell their political influence. Lyndon Johnson's door was always open to anyone willing to "pay to play" and there were many such opportunities for that. Another involved a flamboyant Texas entrepreneur gifted with an ability to see multiple ways to defraud the government; his name was Billie Sol Estes, and the stories of his various schemes, together with an expanding list of "suicides" of his associates, made national newspapers and considerable time on the three television networks all during 1962. As soon as that was beginning to dissolve into the dustbin of history--thanks to Johnson's maneuvers to have other wealthy friends take over Estes' remaining assets, as a way to remove the stories from those newspapers--the even more outrageous scandals involving Johnson and Bobby Baker began appearing in 1963. The news reports appeared in practically every newspaper in the United States for months on end. But readers will find little in the major LBJ biographies about either of his major partners in crime; in the case of Estes, there is nothing about him in Robert Caro's so-far four volume / 3,382 page tome. Baker's name surfaces, though the frequency and depth of his close relationship as reported is not nearly commensurate with his actual involvement in some of Johnson's most sordid affairs.
The extraordinary dichotomy which Selma has brought to the surface-- created by the chasm between LBJ's mythical legacy as a life-long champion of civil rights, in contrast to his own sorry record of exploiting the divisions that existed for a quarter of a century, as he delayed taking any substantive actions to defuse the time-bomb that he had created--is a stunning example of the success of the mythmakers. It is also a testament to the success to the state of political correctness today, including the widespread achievement of public acceptance of this repackaged piece of presidential hypocrisy, masquerading as grand mythology.
The disconnect we have collectively witnessed, initiated by the director of the LBJ Library, Mark Updegrove, stoked by Joseph Califano and poked by dozens of others from every direction, is the inevitable result of the clash of "true history" caught in a time warp with a set of myths created originally by Johnson himself, then perpetuated by the government to hide the secrets of the 1960s assassinations and Johnson's presidency . . . and, clearly, of Lyndon Johnson himself.
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Phillip Nelson is the author of "LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination" and "LBJ: From Mastermind to The Colossus."
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